Obstructions in some patients' airways during sleep can cause limited airflow, leading to apnea, hypopnea, or snoring. The obstruction is often a collapsed pharynx. The obstruction may be a partial airway obstruction, leading to altered characteristics of the airflow. A hyperpnoea is a reduction of flow that is greater than fifty percent, but not complete. An apnea, however, is a complete cessation of airflow. Each of these conditions frequently leads to sleep deprivation.
It is well known to treat patients suffering from sleep deprivation with positive airway pressure therapy (“PAP”). This therapy can be Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (“CPAP”), Variable Positive Airway Pressure (“VPAP”), Bi-level Positive Airway Pressure (“BiPAP”), or any of numerous other forms of respiratory therapy. The application of positive pressure to the patient's pharynx helps minimize or prevent this collapse. Positive airway pressure therapy is currently applied by means of an apparatus containing a pressure source, typically a blower, through a tube to a mask, which the patient wears in bed.
It is desired to control the applied pressure. Too little pressure tends not to solve the problem. Too much pressure tends to cause discomfort to the patient, such as drying out of the mouth and pharynx, as well as difficulty in exhaling against the applied pressure. The difficulty in applying optimum pressure is that incidents of airway obstruction come and go through the course of a night's sleep. One solution is to try to find an optimum pressure for a particular patient and maintain that pressure. This method requires the patient's stay at a sleep clinic, where sleep specialists can monitor the patient's course of breathing throughout one or more night's sleep, prescribe the appropriate pressure for that patient, and then set the apparatus to deliver the appropriate pressure. This method is, of course, inconvenient as well as expensive to the patient and tends to be inaccurate, as a typical patient will not sleep the same when away from familiar bedding and surroundings.
Accordingly, it is desirable to be able to adjust the applied pressure without requiring the patient to attend at a sleep center. Various methods of in-home adjustments have been considered. One method generally thought to be effective is to monitor the patient to try to anticipate the onset of an obstructed airway, and to adjust the pressure in response. When an elevated upper airway resistance or flow obstruction is anticipated or underway, the apparatus increases the applied pressure. When the patient returns to normal sleep, the applied pressure is reduced. The problem then, is to determine when a flow obstruction is occurring or is about to occur. It is desired to anticipate correctly in order to avoid the problems set forth above for when too much or too little pressure is applied.
Various methods have been proposed to solve this problem. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,831 to Halpern, an apparatus monitors the airflow to the patient and posits an event of airway obstruction when the patient's breath fails to meet a predetermined threshold of flow rate or duration. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,1345,995 to Gruenke, an apparatus monitors the airflow to the patient and analyzes the shape of the flow versus time waveform. If the shape of this waveform tends to be flattened, that is, more similar to a plateau than to a sinusoid, the apparatus posits an event of airway obstruction. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,245,995 to Sullivan, an apparatus monitors the patient's sound with a microphone. If audible snores are detected, the apparatus posits an event of airway obstruction. Similarly, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,953,713 to Behbehani, an apparatus measures the total pressure within an interface placed over a patient's airway and inputs frequency data in the range 100 to 150 Hz into a neural network to determine the presence of a pharyngeal wall vibration (a snore) which, according to Behbehani, is a precursor to sleep disorder breathing.
These methods have not proven totally satisfactory in controlling the applied pressure during PAP therapy. For example, the '713 patent, by measuring in the range of 100 to 150 Hz, essentially tests for snoring and does not measure or analyze any information concerning partial airway obstruction (as described within the present application), as this information is found in the lower frequency range 0 to 25 Hz. FIGS. 1 and 2 are plots in the frequency domain of energy v. frequency of typical breathing. As can be seen, there is a marked difference between normal breathing and breathing characterized by a partial airway obstruction, all in low frequencies. The present application exploits this difference to control the delivery of therapeutic gas.
Moreover, the methods of the prior art are unsatisfactory in analyzing a signal in a high-noise environment. The inventors herein have discovered an alternate way to detect the onset of an event of airway obstruction and to control the applied pressure from a high-noise signal such as results from a person's breathing over the course of a night. Accordingly, the method and apparatus of the present invention fulfill the need for analyzing a signal from a patient in order to control the applied pressure during PAP therapy.